From: INFORMATION.LAW
Department of Veterans' Affairs

October 15, 2018

I refer to your request to access information held by our Department under
the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act). The Department received
your request on 13 October 2018. In accordance with section 15(5)(b) of
the FOI Act, the Department has 30 days to process your request. As such,
a decision on your request is due by 12 November 2018.

If you have any questions about your FOI matter, please contact us using
the following details:

Either DVA has a unethical policy of breaching the Archives Act by destroying records, so as to avoid their capture by FOI, or is the most unique public sector agency in the world, in that its identified executive corporate governance committees never meet and never record anything, ever.

I seek internal review on the basis to claim such records do not exist approaches fantasy, given the existence of these committees is identified by DVA itself.

These types of committee simply do not exist in a vacuum, given the members are all at the SES bands, and they report to the DVA board.

It seems like intentional bad faith is in play here, and it is quite disturbing that DVA would go so far as to knowingly lie (but then again, I guess, your flam s 15AB application that the OAIC knocked back as being too ridiculous proves that your willingness to go that far).

From: INFORMATION.LAW
Department of Veterans' Affairs

November 08, 2018

Further to your request received by the Department on 26 October 2018,
please accept this as acknowledgement of your request for an internal
review of FOI 25071. A decision on your request will be due by 26 November
2018.

Please find attached a revised decision and documents released to you in relation to FOI 25071 and Internal Review 25411. This relates to your application for IC Review and 'new scope' (MR19/00922 refers).

We trust this now resolves the review. Please feel free to contact us should you have any questions.

From: Julie

After 110 days of unjustified delay, it is pleasing that the Department has finally dropped its charade that the committee minutes sought - of the committee called the People and Culture Committee at the time of the FOI application (being a rebadging of the long-standing Departmental People Committee) - did not exist (especially given the Department was well aware they did).

It really was completely unjustified for a request for mundane and routine corporate governance records, which the Department should be eager to share given it provides the opportunity for the Department to show it takes corporate governance seriously (which raises the concern why the Department fought tooth and nail in providing access to these and other corporate governance committee records applied for at the same time, most still being given the roundaround by the Department).

While the Herald Sun reported on 9 June 2019 recently that “Veterans are being subjected to hostile and derogatory attitudes” by the Department, it would seem its not just veterans who cop these regrettable behaviours from the Department.

Freedom of information is meant to promote understanding and confidence in public administration, yet too many at the Department see it as poison and the opportunity for aggressive adversarialism, indiscriminately engaging in a childish intransigence to shift from a culture of wilful opaqueness.

It is, simply put, a waste of Commonwealth resources for the Department to string simple FOIs out 110 days, requiring multiple parties to intervene, to get them completed. And as you are aware, no change was made to the FOI scope as the Department was well aware what records were sought, was well aware that the addition of ‘and Culture’ to the People Committee name did not erase its ongoing nature/history, and I rejected the Department’s attempt to replace this FOI in a way that all dates and processes would begin anew, with all dates reset (just to manipulate the FOI stats).